5 ideas you can try with your teams to help their well-being during lockdown

It’s fair to say that daily life has changed dramatically within the last few months, with one significant change being the shift from office working to home working. With increased isolation from family, friends and colleagues, and less time spent outdoors doing our favourite activities, it’s the little things that can make a big impact on our mental well-being during this strange time.

So what can businesses do to help their teams, both in terms of general well-being and productivity?

5 ideas you can try with your teams to help their well-being during lockdown

At Blokur we’ve tried a number of different ways to ensure our team members are united and able to socialise in between work. This article outlines just a few of the highlights of some initiatives we’ve put in place. Our post may be able to give you some ideas on how to help your teams through lockdown but there’s nothing that says this is the only right way of doing so, it’s just what has been working well for us at Blokur.


Donut

Donut is an app for Slack which automatically pairs teammates to encourage them to have a chat and a short break from work. The app helps you schedule the meeting and even provides conversation starters for those who’d appreciate a few ideas (from experience the conversation starters are often very creative and humorous!)

It’s a great and easy way to get to know your colleagues better and helps to add a social aspect to working from home. We’re currently using Donut once a week to schedule a chat.

5 ideas you can try with your teams to help their well-being during lockdown Donut

Games Night

Every fortnight we host a Games Night which gets the whole Blokur team involved in interactive games such as parlour games, games based on quiz shows such as Would I Lie To You and traditional quiz questions. Many of the rounds naturally include a music theme including guess the song from the lyrics, pick-up songblack music history, name-that tune played on glockenspiel...there’s no limit to the creativity! The event sparks fun competition between our two teams, Quarantune (current winners) and Agatha Quiztie, making it a fun break from work and getting everyone together in one place.

5 ideas you can try with your teams to help their well-being during lockdown games night

Morning Coffee/Record of the Day/Unofficial Running Club

To help stay in touch and coordinated during lockdown, the Blokur business team have a daily Morning Coffee meeting which is usually a short catch up over a tea or coffee to see how everyone is doing and often spans many topics, from lockdown baking to staying in shape (baking doesn’t help with this!) and music of course.

From this, Record of the Day and the Unofficial Running Club were born.

It soon became apparent that two of our team members were regularly running and were covering very impressive distances, leading to other members joining in with the running. We started using the Nike Run Club app to track our progress and I even found myself running every now and then thanks to the support of my team members.

Alongside this and more recently, Record of the Day came into being. We regularly discuss music and after our interest was peaked by Lady Gaga’s Chromaticawe all went away and listened, bringing back our own review of the album. This has continued, with a new album chosen each day ranging from Beyonce and Run The Jewels to The Beach Boys and The Fall.

5 ideas you can try with your teams to help their well-being during lockdown morning coffee

Instrument of the Day

When lockdown first began and the Morning Coffee meetings were set up, they started out with ‘Instrument of the Day’ where team members would show and tell a story behind an unusual instrument they have in their house. We saw a vast array of instruments, from a drum machine to a harpsichord, tribal instruments and a kid’s harmonica. A special thanks goes out to the CEO of Blokur, for providing nearly all the instruments for over a month!

Unfortunately we did eventually run out of instruments but it was great fun and very educational while it lasted.

5 ideas you can try with your teams to help their well-being during lockdown instrument of the day

The Virtual Kitchen

In a recent survey to see how Blokur could make homeworking more comfortable and productive for its team we found that one of the things that Blokur members miss the most is our lunchtimes together. For the most part we would always spend lunch together, discussing and debating many interesting topics including where the best place to grab lunch from is.

To try and recreate this, we’ve created ‘The Virtual Kitchen’ which is a Google Hangouts link where team members can stop by to have their lunch and a chat. It may not be exactly the same as seeing everyone in person but it’s the closest we can get for now. Real kitchen or no kitchen, there’s still an array of interesting debates going on!

5 ideas you can try with your teams to help their well-being during lockdown virtual kitchen

Little initiatives such as these have brought us all many great laughs and much needed interaction to help us with our overall well-being and productivity during lockdown. As we continue working from home, our lockdown interaction techniques will surely continue to evolve as we become more and more acclimatised to our new way of life. Don’t forget though that it’s ok not to be ok, and that it’s important to seek the right help when needed.

We hope that our initiatives can help to spark ideas for other companies too as we all work through this pandemic together.